I found myself wrestling with the 6-day creation history this morning. The leaps and bounds of science make it the 800 pound gorilla in the room so to speak. I'm a firm believer of the 6-day creation theory. So with this in mind I started speculating. What if it was a history told from God to humanity as if told to a child? With my mind all over the map, I began thinking. He is the creator of all things, visible and invisible, creator of the universe and all it's dimensions. Would it be a difficult task to create us and all that surrounds us in such a short time? A being with limitless knowledge, power. A being for which there is no beginning and no end? He thinks it, it is done. We create diamonds in labs these days in the blink of an eye when compared to the natural processes. To me nothing screams out louder there is a God than the human body. All those atoms in perfect symphony bringing forth molecules, cells, tissues and organs, giving rise to consciousness and the soul. My mind does have difficulty at times wrapping itself around the 6-day history. I take the account of 6 days creation on faith. All he asks of us is to have faith. And that's it for my inane ramblings of the day.

"Without a doubt, the ultimate Black Swan is whatever it was that permitted merely genetic human beings to emerge into full humanness just yesterday (cosmically speaking), some 50,000 years ago. .....

"....once man consciously enters the sensorium of time and space, he is implicitly aware of both Absolute and Infinite, and therefore Love, Truth, Justice, Beauty, Virtue, and Eternity. These are the things that define man, not his genome. ....."

1. Who is God & Moses speaking to in Genesis? Mostly illiterate folk with a strong use of oral tradition. A people who had heard all of the other contemporary Creation mythologies told by the cultures and peoples that surrounded them. A people that had no concept of great periods of time - they mostly lived “seasonally.”

2. So perhaps God says to Himself, “How do I get the point across that I am self and eternally existant and that I have created everything?” He tells them in a story and timeline makes the true point and that they can wrap their minds around.

3. And the true point of Genesis is after all, that God has created everything.

I’ve always wondered how life can form in a sterile environment? Computers don’t build themselves, and neither do houses. Even if there are protein molecules and chemical reactions, that doesn’t prove further reactions.

I've though about this many a time, although not recently. To me, whether is was 6 24 hour days or 6 million years, the key factor for me is what gets me into Heaven. That answer for me is my acceptance of Jesus as my savior.

As for the science of the earth, some scientists or students will laugh at the idea of the world being created and coming from nothing, but will turn around and state that the world and universe came from nothing.

These are the little things that people use to try and prove that God doesn't exist, but they fail to realize that my faith isn't centered around the length of time it took for earth to be formed. Just my 2 cents worth. Thanks for allowing me to quit working for a few minutes. :)

The “big bang” in concept supports creation theory in that it shows the universe had a beginning. Anything that begins to exist has to have had a creator. This refuted the athiest position at the time that the universe was eternal and thus needed no creator (the “steady state” universe theory). The fact the universe had a beginning is an overwhelming rational argument for the existance of God.

Doubtless our minds have difficulty wrapping themselves around creation ex nihilo but not progressive evolutionism because evolutionism speaks of one thing happening after another thing and this process describes how our minds work.

We think as we speak. First one word, then another and another, each word following after the one before it and never more than one word at a time. Thus our need for faith for what our minds cannot grasp.

First, the Bible in many places uses the word “day” for periods other than one solar Earth day, even employing such specific phrases as “a day for a year, a day for a year” (in a guide to interpreting a prophecy) and “to the Lord a thousand years are as one day”.

Second, God, as presented by the Bible, is omnipotent. If the Bible account is correct, he can circumvent what we view as immutable laws of nature (or maybe there’s a backdoor there available even to us if only we were smart enough to find it). If He wanted to do all that creating in six literal Earth days, the God of the Bible could do so. Therefore the plausibility of the creation account rests on the authenticity of the Bible in general.

19
posted on 03/02/2012 9:02:58 AM PST
by Still Thinking
(Freedom is NOT a loophole!)

The creation story was told, by God, to Moses. If you look at the words carefully, you realize that there is not enough information in the account to nail down how long it really took. It’s really one of those useless arguments since God was intentionally vague on the things on which he wanted to be intentionally vague. He discusses creation and science (and the future) in His word in such a way as to not give anything away. It is why he tells John, in revelation, not to write down what the seven thunders say.

OTOH, regarding all of creation, if you could go back in time and meet Adam 15 minutes after God created him, how old would you guess him to be? ;-)

Scripture says six days, I believe it was six days. God didn’t intend for the Bible to be a riddle; He indicates where He is speaking in parables, and I didn’t see that in the account of creation.

It’s hard to wrap our minds around a six day creation because our minds are so limited, and He is so awesome, so limitless and all-powerful. When we struggle to find alternate explanations for Biblical accounts, it’s because of our limitations, not His. I not only believe the six-day creation wasn’t difficult; I believe it was as simple for Him as speaking it into existence, or even willing it.

“Without a doubt, the ultimate Black Swan is whatever it was that permitted merely genetic human beings to emerge into full humanness just yesterday (cosmically speaking), some 50,000 years ago. .....”

Science only reaffirms my faith, as others in this thread have stated. I think most Christians would be willing to accept the Big Bang as God’s “Creative Act,” but balk at evolution being the sole tool of God for the creation of mankind. The Bible is very specific about this act, and there’s not a ton of vagueness here which is compatible with the prevailing scientific explanation.

I choose to view Evolution as God’s creative engine, but view the creation of Mankind as a separate act. I don’t see how anyone who owns a dog can say that evolution could not explain much of the diversity on Earth. At the same time humanity is too special an animal with no peer on Earth that would lead me to think we just happened to be the next rung up fron the great apes.

Doubtless our minds have difficulty wrapping themselves around creation ex nihilo but not progressive evolutionism because evolutionism speaks of one thing happening after another thing and this process describes how our minds work.

Well, yes and no. Einstein established an equivalency between energy and matter. Humans have tapped this in a small way with nuclear electricity generation and the atom bomb, in which an exceedingly small portion of the matter originally existing disappears and is changed into energy. In an atomic explosion, the original mass of fissile material is relatively small, maybe a few 10s of kg, and the amount converted to energy is an exceedingly small fraction of that, yet look at the vast amount of energy liberated.

Now, humans other than Tom Swift don't know how to reverse the process, that is, to turn energy into matter, but given enough knowledge and access to the immense amounts of energy that would be required, there's no reason it shouldn't be possible. And the Bible presents God as comprising and having access to, virtually unlimited amounts of energy.

29
posted on 03/02/2012 9:19:58 AM PST
by Still Thinking
(Freedom is NOT a loophole!)

The problem with believing the 6 days were “eons” and that evolution is therefore “OK” is that it destroys the Adam and Eve narrative and the Fall of Man. Adam is referred to by Paul, and Jesus makes reference to God creating man and woman. Jesus’s entire saving work is predicated on saving sinful man from Adam’s fall.

“It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation” (The Literal Interpretation of Genesis 1:1920 [A.D. 408]).

“With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation” (ibid., 2:9).

“Seven days by our reckoning, after the model of the days of creation, make up a week. By the passage of such weeks time rolls on, and in these weeks one day is constituted by the course of the sun from its rising to its setting; but we must bear in mind that these days indeed recall the days of creation, but without in any way being really similar to them” (ibid., 4:27).

“[A]t least we know that it [the Genesis creation day] is different from the ordinary day with which we are familiar” (ibid., 5:2).

“For in these days [of creation] the morning and evening are counted until, on the sixth day, all things which God then made were finished, and on the seventh the rest of God was mysteriously and sublimely signalized. What kind of days these were is extremely difficult or perhaps impossible for us to conceive, and how much more to say!” (The City of God 11:6 [A.D. 419]).

“We see that our ordinary days have no evening but by the setting [of the sun] and no morning but by the rising of the sun, but the first three days of all were passed without sun, since it is reported to have been made on the fourth day. And first of all, indeed, light was made by the word of God, and God, we read, separated it from the darkness and called the light day and the darkness night; but what kind of light that was, and by what periodic movement it made evening and morning, is beyond the reach of our senses; neither can we understand how it was and yet must unhesitatingly believe it” (ibid., 11:7).

“They [pagans] are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of [man as] many thousands of years, though reckoning by the sacred writings we find that not 6,000 years have yet passed” (ibid., 12:10).

I remember once reading an athiest’s denial of creation by saying it was all bogus because God created mand and all of the animals on the fifth day but didn’t create the vegetation to feed them until the sixth. Like dude, they couldn’t go one day without eating?

Indeed. Anyone who ascribes a 24 hour period to a 6 day creation story is lacking in reading comprehension skills. The Earth was created on the third day, no?

So how long were days One and Two? 25 hours? 25 million years? Who can say? In God's time, it is just as likely as any other explanation. As the author states, "What if it was a history told from God to humanity as if told to a child?"

There's a great book out there that reconciles the whole thing; "Genesis and the Big Bang" by Gerald L. Schroeder Ph.D. It's on Amazon for around ten bucks.

36
posted on 03/02/2012 9:34:10 AM PST
by Bloody Sam Roberts
(Do all He commands. Receive all He promises.)

The Bible is not an exact time replication, do you think that with all that begatting any one of the originals listed in Chapter 5 of Genesis {Adam's Descendents} in the Bible lived for 930, 912, 905, 910, 895 or 960 years?

There are, of course, modern, deviant forms of Christianity that reject evolution, but these turn out to be much more similar to materialistic science, not in terms of content, of course, but in the form of thought.

We are not a participant in this battle, since it is really between two forms of flatland literalism which can only account for creation with recourse to magic -- the magic of "it just happened" vs. the magic of "God made it all happen."

The latter is, of course, closer to ultimate truth, but this is little consolation once we remember that it is also what the Mohammedans believe -- that God is responsible for everylittlething that happens, with no mediation by anything else, from physical law to human free will. So in either case -- the false religion of scientism or the bogus science of religionism -- we end up with man stripped of his innate dignity, and a man without intrinsic dignity is not a man.

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